What Is Reflective Reasoning?

Last week I was talking about intuition. I think of intuition as — among other things — unconscious and automatic reasoning. The opposite of that would be conscious and deliberative reasoning. We might call that reflective reasoning.† In this post, I want to talk about reflective reasoning. How does it work? And why does it work? And — spoiler alert — why does it sometimes not work?

1. An Example

Do some math for me, will you? Multiply 13 x 16. And try doing it in your head. Don’t use scrap paper or a calculator or anything like that.

Question: what were you doing when you reasoned your way to the answer?

You were — among other things — reasoning reflectively. That is, you consciosuly and deliberately thought about some stuff — like ’16’, ’13’, and ‘How might I multiply 16 by 13?’.And that is a classic case of reflective reasoning: consciously and deliberately thinking about thought(s).

2. Reflective Reasoning Works

We can do great stuff with reflective reasoning. Thanks to reflective reasoning, we can retrace our mental steps, spot errors, and fix those errors. We can even construct a narrative of each step in this process.

And these tasks are pretty important — and not just for doing spontaneous multiplication tasks. These tasks help us plan for the future, learn from our past, and explain our reasoning (to ourselves and to others). So if reflective reasoning is responsible for carrying out these tasks, then it is a good thing …when it works, that is.

What about when it doesn’t work? How does that happen? And why does that happen? Why does reflective reasoning sometimes result in patently false judgments (Bortolotti 2011, section 3)? And why does it sometimes increase our bias (Kahan et al 2017; Schkade et al 2010)?

3. But How? And Why?

So while it’s obvious that reflective reasoning can work, it’s not obvious why it does.†† And it’s certainly not obvious why it sometimes doesn’t work.

A good account of reflective reasoning will make this more obvious. A good account will explain not only what reflective reasoning is, but how and why it works. And, importantly, a good account of reflective reasoning will explain how and why it sometimes doesn’t work.

In my dissertation, I hope to provide a good account of reflective reasoning: an account that explains the why and the how.

I’ll be blogging about my progress as I work on the dissertation. So subscribe to the blog or follow me on social media if you’re interested in learning more about the project. Or if you just want to see the final product, then follow me on Google Scholar where the finished dissertation will be posted.

Until Next Time

Less reflective philosophers were more likely to be theists, physicalists (as opposed to psychologists) about personal identity, Fregeans about language, and scientific anti-realists (although that last one turned out to be a spurious correlation, as I mention in the thesis). Less reflective philosophers were also less likely to save five people by killing one.

Post navigation

Looks like you are using an ad blocker. I get it: Ads suck. I just wanted to let you know that you can support the website by either (a) adding this site to your whitelist in your ad blocker, (b) Patreon or PayPal, or (c) by sharing the website with your online friends. No pressure, obviously. Just letting you know how to support in case you already want to support. Happy internetting!